


Them's Fightin' Words

by mad_mary_kidd (madmarykidd)



Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol, Gen, Minor Violence, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:20:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23208391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madmarykidd/pseuds/mad_mary_kidd
Summary: One-shot. Felix loses his temper and regrets it real fast.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	Them's Fightin' Words

The great thing about Felix Millstone is that he never backs down from a fight. Of course, the flip side of that is that he never backs down from a fight. He has a righteous fire burning in his belly, working-class hero and champion of the underdog. The trouble is, Felix is a hammer so all his problems look like nails. Not that Crash is on Felix’s (former) foreman’s side, because who needles a young hothead with an attitude problem about his tossball team for the hell of it? What was the idiot expecting? That face was destined to meet the rude end of a tossball stick from the moment he hired Felix Millstone.

No, Crash has no sympathy, but he has inherited the same problem - even if he understands how not to point the nozzle in his own face. Mostly it works out okay. Most of the people who cross Felix these days are marauders who need killing anyway, and in doing so Felix works off some surplus aggression. Win-win. But there are still the odd occasions when a relative innocent accidentally casts themselves as The Oppressor, and that’s when things get sticky.

This time it’s some off duty guard at Malin’s who bumps Felix’s shoulder as he, Crash and Max make their way to a table on the other side of the bar after a hard, frustrating day of getting chased all over Monarch by Mantiqueens. Manti _quin_? Whatever. Crash sees the impact happen out of the corner of his eye, and tries not to sigh too obviously as Felix stiffens next to him, suddenly radiating hostility. They make it to the table and sit down, but Felix is giving the guard the hairy eyeball the entire way.

“What are you lookin’ at?” the guard calls across the room after a moment.

“Five to ten if you don’t shut up and drink your beer.”

Crash commences drinking as much of his own beer as he can before he’s forced to abandon it. The guard snorts, looks down his nose at Felix. “Get spaced, station trash,” he drawls, amused. 

Felix rears up. “What’d you call me?”

“You heard.” 

“Why don’t you go find a volcano to fall in, Terra Boy,” Felix spits, eyes alight.

“Yeah keep talking, Zero Gee, I can hear your muscles wasting all the way over here - ”

The sentence is barely halfway out of the guy’s mouth before Felix is up and leaping over the table to get at him - “Fuckin’ show _you_ who’s wasting - ” or at least, he tries to.

Luckily Crash saw this coming and manages to leap up and get an arm around Felix’s waist to hold him back. It doesn’t stop him hitting the table with his knee and spilling everything on it, including Max’s whiskey. The vicar gives him a distinctly unamused glare as he shakes the liquor off his sleeve. Felix is too riled up to notice anything but his adversary, who has now lost his sense of humor and is getting to his feet.

“Knock it off,” growls Crash in his ear in a tone that says quite clearly, ‘you will do as I say or I will put you on your ass myself’. Fuckin’ kids, testosterone kicks in and suddenly they wanna fight everything they can’t fuck.

Fortunately, Terra Boy’s friends have had the same thought as Crash, and are holding _him_ back in turn. Better that than the alternative, which would be all six of them piling on to the Unreliable boys - everyone is shouting, and the bartender loudest of all as she comes over.

“Hey, hey, _hey_! No fighting in the bar, take it outside. I am contractually obligated to remind you that C&P is not liable for any damage or injury incurred while consuming or otherwise under the influence of their products - ”

Felix and Terra Boy don’t hear anyone but each other, and are still busy yelling - in spite of Crash’s warning. An accidental elbow in Crash’s ribs and his temper snaps. He begins to drag Felix backwards, still writhing and yelling insults, out of the bar before Terra Boy’s friends change their minds and turn him loose. Max rolls his eyes and stands calmly to join them, for all the world as if he weren’t directly between two frothing jackasses prevented from murdering each other only by the sense and physical strength of their friends.

They get outside and Crash physically throws Felix away from him - the kid staggers but rallies quickly, launching himself back at the door. Crash is about to tackle him low and put him on his ass for real but before either of them can move, Max’s fist flies out of nowhere and clocks Felix in the jaw.

In the shocked silence that follows, Crash finds himself holding back a bark of surprised laughter. The sight of Felix, stunned into stillness not by the punch so much as the direction from which it came, and Max wryly shaking out his hand and looking mildly irritated at worst, is just too funny.

“Do as you’re fucking told for once in your life, you stupid boy,” says Max, frowning at Felix. “I’m all for solving problems with violence, but I don’t start what I can’t finish.”

Felix, who picks now to find his voice again, decides that the best response is to address Max as the new threat. “Oh yeah?” he challenges, chest puffed out.

Max's whole demeanor turns on a dime at this, and his expression flips from vaguely annoyed to absolutely pants-shittingly terrifying. Even Crash takes a step back. 

“Try me,” he snarls through clenched teeth, suddenly seeming about a foot taller. It seems less like a challenge, and more like Max is actually itching for an excuse - holding himself back, even. Barely. For a split second Crash thinks Felix really might be dumb enough to ignore the flashing neon warning signs and actually literally get himself murdered. To his relief, however, the icy, barely controlled malevolence in Max’s expression is enough to finally douse the fire in Felix’s. He backs off, ducking his head in sudden fear and deference. If he had a tail it would be firmly between his legs.

And just like that, Max’s expression settles back somewhere between bored and mildly irritated. A blink later and Crash isn’t certain he didn’t imagine it. He is reminded of the neighbors of serial killers - ‘we had no idea, he was always so quiet’.

“Felix, go kick some rocks for a minute, will you?” Crash says into the silence, not wanting to take his eyes off Max. Felix nods and walks away wordlessly, massaging his jaw. It’ll help cool him off - and keep him out of harm’s way. He knows he doesn’t need to tell him to stay away from the bar; he doubts he’ll see any kind of bad behavior from Felix for a good long while. Definitely not where he thinks Max might see him, anyway. The only thing Crash is slightly concerned about is where Felix is going to put all that frustrated aggression, but he’ll deal with that later. That’s what marauders are for, and Monarch doesn't seem to be hurting for 'em.

Max throws him a look - it is part contrition and part resignation. “I know,” he says, the minute Felix is out of earshot. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to undermine your authority, Captain. It won’t happen again.”

“I just… Wow, Max. That was pretty fuckin’ scary.” How have they been wandering around the colony with him all this time and never noticed the monster just behind his eyes?

Max sighs. “I have been that young man,” he says, nodding over at Felix who is standing by the river, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched. “And I know that the only thing that gets through that red haze is a bigger threat.”

“Yeah, maybe dial it back a notch next time? I really thought I was about to witness a murder.”

“For what it’s worth I wasn’t going to hurt him. I just needed him to think that I might.”

Crash raises one eyebrow at this. “You sure looked like you were gonna.” This is an understatement. He had looked like he was going to tear into Felix with his bare hands, and bathe in the kid’s entrails.

“In fact if he hadn’t backed down, I’m not sure I could have beaten him. He’s stronger than me, and faster.” Crash is uncomfortably sure that Max is only saying this to stop him worrying. Which of course, has the opposite effect.

“Yeah, but you’re tougher, and more experienced. You’ve been in _prison_.”

“So has he, according to Commandant Sanita.”

“Getting arrested for loitering and petty theft isn’t exactly the same as doing hard time, Max. He’s a kid, he’s what, twenty-two? Twenty-three?” That’s barely younger than Crash, and certainly isn’t to say that Crash didn’t get arrested for equally stupid shit back on earth, but the point remains.

“Well, if he wants to play with the big boys, he’ll have to learn that there’s always someone bigger.”

Crash eyes him silently for a minute. “And that’s you, huh?” he asks. “No, never mind. Here I was hoping maybe he’d learn to solve his problems with something other than his fists.”

Max nods thoughtfully. “You’re quite right. It’s a lesson I, apparently, still haven’t quite learned myself. I apologize, Captain.”

“Apologize to him,” says Crash, nodding at Felix, who is still standing on the river bank with his back to them. As they watch he crouches down and picks up a pebble, tosses it half-heartedly into the water. It doesn't even skip. 

He knows he’s poked the beast by ordering Max to apologize, but this time Max keeps it on a leash. Crash is the Captain here and he can’t let Max think that he can do whatever he wants, no matter how much older he is. He’s just proven to them both that he doesn’t always know best, in spite of his greater experience.

Max nods. “Of course, Captain.” To his credit, he goes right on over to Felix to do just that. Crash sticks around, close enough in case there’s trouble, far enough to give them privacy.

**Author's Note:**

> I dunno man, I wanted to have something uploaded that wasn't Fallout, but I don't know if this counts, y'know? It's just practice, really. I have a bunch of stuff written for Crash, it's completely incoherent though. I may upload some of the saucier ones if I can make any of it make sense. Anyway, thanks for reading!


End file.
